Tidus' Contest History
Who is Tidus? Tidus has been given many nicknames since his appearance in Final Fantasy X, with "Tee-dus" and Meg Ryan being two of the most popular. Unfortunately for him, those who make fun of him have damned good reasons to do so through the first 65% of the game. The main idea behind Tidus's character is that he is human. He acts in a way that many of us would assimilate if we were thrown into the same situation as him. While this has some merit to it, people don;t usually play video games for a cathartic cleansing of the emotions. They play video games to live in a fantasy world, to see characters act in ways that we as real people would never think to act like in real life, and above all, to have fun. How much fun can you have watching the main character of an RPG act like an annoying little brother for over half the game? Tidus does redeem himself in the second half of the game, however. Once he learns the true nature of Yuna's pilgrimage, he grows up before our very eyes, and becomes a real man by the end of the game. Such character development is rarely seen in today's RPGs, but unfortunately, a lot of people give up on Tidus before they realize that he is maturing. Aside from Tidus's main role in the story, he has a background in Blitzball, which is the most popular sport in the world of FFX. He is the son of the biggest star to ever play the game, Jecht. Jecht is a hero to the people, but underneath his superstar status lies a drunk who mentally abused Tidus for most of his life. Tidus never truly gets past this, which explains why he acts the way he does for a majority of the story. But Tidus is a character who I feel gets unfairly stereotyped simply because he isn't the "typical" RPG lead character. Unlike Cloud and Squall, Tidus shows his emotions, acts like an actual human being, and matures as he gains more experience in life. It's a shame that so many would choose to make fun of him instead of understanding the way he is. "Listen to my story. This may be our last chance." - Tidus Tidus's Contest History Win-Loss Record: 5-10 Summer 2002 Contest - West Division - 8 Seed * Western Round 1 --- Defeated (9) Claire Redfield, 35004 55.46% - 28117 44.54% * Western Quarterfinal --- Lost to (1) Sonic the Hedgehog, 23516 41.17% - 33602 58.83% * Extrapolated Strength --- 11th Place 33.8% Summer 2003 Contest - North Division - 5 Seed * Northern Round 1 --- Lost to (12) Ganondorf, 57078 49.32% - 58660 50.68% * Extrapolated Strength --- 13th Place 33.14% Summer 2004 Contest - 20XX Division - 8 Seed * 20XX Round 1 --- Defeated (9) Shadow the Hedgehog, 48334 50.81% - 46788 49.19% * 20XX Quarterfinal --- Lost to (1) Mega Man, 31033 35.22% - 57069 64.78% * Extrapolated Strength --- 24th Place 25.35% When it comes to being flat-out unlucky in seeding in contests, few have a bigger complaint than Tidus. He was stuck with an 8 seed in 2002, and was promptly blown away by Sonic the Hedgehog in the second round. He received a seeding more worthy of his strength in 2003, but was cut down by a vastly underseeded newcomer in Ganondorf in a match that was hotly contested the entire day. So in 2004, Tidus does not get rewarded for his efforts in the least. He was stuck back down as an 8 seed, and after winning a tough match against Shadow the Hedgehog, Tidus was absolutely killed by Mega Man in the second round. It was a collapse that very few people saw coming, and Tidus has vastly suffered for it in the stats. Tidus is a character worthy of a 4 or 5 seed every year, yet one glance at the 2004 Xsts would lead some to believe that Tidus belongs in the contest as a perpetual 8 seed. This is not the case, and even though Tidus may not be the most popular character in his own game, he is still a character worthy of more respect than what he gets. He has yet to get out of the second round in any contest, but in his defense, he was horribly underseeded in two of those contests. With proper seeding, he could easily be a Sweet 16 character every year. But as things currently stand, Tidus has a huge monkey on his back that he may never be able to shake until he actually gets to the third round. Summer 2005 Contest - Dream Division - 4 Seed * Dream Round 1 --- Defeated (5) The King of All Cosmos, 73408 72.54% - 27787 27.46% * Dream Semifinal --- Lost to (1) Kirby, 43215 42.35% - 58825 57.65% * Extrapolated Strength --- 26th Place 27.16% The Dream division's name was pretty ironic, given that Tidus had a decent chance at winning it >_> Anyway, after Tidus was blown out by Mega Man in 2004, people automatically assumed it to be a fluke. After all, Tidus wasn't falling in line with what 2003 stats suggested and like stat fanboys tend to do, they weren't willing to believe that Tidus not stacking up to what his match with Ganondorf in 2003 suggested. Enter 2005. Not only does Tidus fail to blow away a joke entry, but he then turns around and makes himself out to look as weak as Ramza 2003 in a match that he was supposed to win with ease. Yes Kirby was a 1 seed and was just coming off of Canvas Curse, but this match was more about Tidus proving that his bad loss to Mega Man was no fluke more than it was Kirby's increase in strength. The question from here is simply whether or not they've learned their lesson in deciding whether or not certain matches are flukes. Summer 2006 Contest - Patriot Division - 5 Seed * Patriot Round 1 --- Lost to (4) Squall, 31893 27.98% - 82091 72.02% * Extrapolated Strength --- 45th Place 22.25% Tidus is a long, long way away from being even with Ganon in 2003. SFF or not, he's in serious danger of missing the field at his current pace of stinking it up. Summer 2007 Contest - Division 6 - Third Group * Division 6 Round 1 --- 2nd place, 38881 31.84% - Pikachu, 44717 36.62% - Isaac, 21496 17.60% - Serge, 17009 13.93% * Division 6 Round 2 --- 4th place, 26327 20.82% - Leon Kennedy, 42128 33.31% - Pikachu, 30533 24.14% - Vivi Ornitier, 27480 21.73% Tidus's contest performance depressed me, to be quite honest. First of all, he lost badly to Pikachu in round 1. As if that wasn't bad enough, he managed to resist SFF from Vivi a little too well, and he prevented either of them from advancing, once again letting Pikachu squeak through. Yes, I am a depressed Tidus fanboy. So what? Summer 2008 Contest - Division 5 - First Group * Division 5 Round 1 --- 2nd place, 43425 31.72% - W.C.C, 44096 32.21% - Donkey Kong, 29086 21.25% - Miles "Tails" Prower, 20279 14.81% * Division 5 Round 2 --- 3rd place, 31608 22.75% - Mega Man, 50711 36.51% - W.C.C, 39758 28.62% - Nero, 16834 12.12% Winter 2010 Contest - Varia Division - 4 Seed * Varia Round 1 --- Lost to (13) Sub-Zero, 35717 46.14% - 41693 53.86% * Extrapolated Strength --- 40th Place 26.46% Thanks to CATS and his winless record missing the contest entirely, Tidus is now the only character to be in every contest that has never made the third round. This would be mildly interesting if he was just some character from a game with a strong cult following, but he's not. He's the main character of one of the more popular Final Fantasy games. Final Fantasy X made the finals of the 2009 "Best. Game. Ever." Every other character from the game that has been in a contest (not including Sin's Villains Contest appearance) has been to the third round at least once--all'' four of them.'' How can a main character be so much weaker than his game? Summer 2013 Contest - Division 8 - 11 Seed * Division 8 Round 1 --- 2nd place, 11544 40.50% - (8) Missingno, 11567 40.58% - (20) Banjo, 5392 18.92% Tidus gets victimized by bracket placement again. With 8-seeds being reserved for "Board 8 rallies" and therefore populated primarily by an odd assortment of joke characters, an 11-seed would seem to be a decent place to end up unless you ran into an underseeded monster on the 20-seed line...or happened to be in the same division as L-Block or Missingno. Tidus started this match out in a hole, falling behind by more than 300 votes in the first hour, but managed to stop the bleeding considerably after that, making occasional cuts and never allowing the lead to reach 400. Missingno's lead maxed out shortly after 3 AM, and by 4, the two were more or less going dead even with many updates moving by only 1 or 2 votes and the larger updates going mostly in Tidus's favor. Tidus finally took the lead just past 9 AM, but in the final hour, Missingno had back-to-back update wins of 23 and 35 and then three updates later a win of 38 that allowed Missingno to retake the lead with only three updates remaining. Naturally there were cries of cheating, but the result was verified as being legitimate (in fact SBAllen found cheating 2:1 in favor of Tidus), and Tidus ended up losing by the fourth-smallest margin in contest history. An improvement, to be sure, but it's been 5 years since he advanced to the second round and 8 years since he won a match outright. Fall 2018 Contest - Division 1 - 7 Seed * Division 1 Round 1 --- Lost to (10) Donkey Kong, 11216 43.07% - 14826 56.93% Tidus finally had a bracket placement that wasn't totally unfavorable: after all, the only one with a more unexpectedly underwhelming contest history is Donkey Kong. A match between the two biggest choke artists of GameFAQs! And given Final Fantasy has been falling in strength while DK has had new and popular games, Tidus was the one to come up short. Category:Contest Histories